Join the Agile Boston user group as we gather
for AGILE BOSTON OPEN SPACE 2010 on Wednesday April 28, in Waltham
Massachusetts. This is your fun, informative, convenient, content-rich,
no-empty-calories, 100% Boston agile community
event. We put it together
for your enjoyment, in one great day.

Come and learn the latest techniques and trends
in Agile and Scrum. Come and learn from experts on Lean, Kanban,
Scrum, organizational learning, facilitation, and more!!

Who Can Benefit Most from Attendance:

Managers, Developers and Project Sponsors
who are NEW TO AGILE

Experienced Agile Scrum Masters, Product
Owners and Coaches

PMP-certified and other project managers who
want to extend their knowledge of Agile & skills

Developers and Testers and others who
are affected by Agile and Scrum initiatives at work

This festive event includes
great speakers, great food, great socializing, and great Scrum
authorities-- including Ken Schwaber,
Amr Esslamadisy, Steven "Doc" List, Dan Mezick and
Michael de la Maza.

However, these speakers are not the star
of the show-- YOU are.

This is an OPEN SPACE event!!
If you have never attended an Open Space event, you are in for
a lot of fun !

For this event, the morning
agenda is fixed, and the invited speakers present sessions,
in a standard classroom-style
format.

But then after lunch, the
agenda for the rest is self-organized by the attendees,
with guidance and assistance from
our World-class facilitator:
Steven "Doc" List.

The Open Space format provides you with an
opportunity to talk about the topics that are important to you.

You will
create the agenda, and in doing so you will have the chance
to focus discussions on the things you care about, want to learn
about, and want to share.

Whether you're new to Scrum and want
to learn more, or experienced in leading Agile teams and
want to learn what's working for others, bring it here and propose
a session.

Open Space is a working example of self-organization
and community ownership in action. The format is being used
throughout the world to facilitate group decision making in organizations
of all sizes.

12:00PM LUNCH. Live
music from BOB MAC WILLIAMS. Socializing
over some good food & beverages.

01:00PM AGILE
OPEN SPACE EVENT: OPENING & ORGANIZATION with Facilitator
Steven "Doc" List.
We build an agenda with 3 sessions per hour, running concurrently.
The Open Space format ground-rules allow you to move around,
and experience each session as you see fit!!

02:00-0:300PM OPEN SPACE
Part 1 (3 sessions)

03:00-04:00PM OPEN SPACE
Part 2 (3 sessions)

04:00-05:00PM OPEN SPACE
Part 3 (3 sessions)

AGILE BOSTON OPEN SPACE 2010 SPEAKERS

Ken Schwaber is the
pioneer who created Scrum with Jeff Sutherland and founded the
Scrum Alliance. The
result is a proliferation of
Scrum worldwide. Over 64 THOUSAND people throughout the world
are certified as Scrum
Master
through Ken's development of the Scrum Alliance. See
Ken's bio here

Steven “Doc” List (generally
known as Doc) is currently a principal consultant with ThoughtWorks,
a highly respected international technology consulting company.
Doc’s focus is on organizational transformation and agile
adoption.

Doc teaches agile and Scrum and delivers
agile coaching for ThoughWorks.
In this role, he has facilitated Open Space conferences all over
the world and
in
recognized as
an
expert
in facilitated
group decision-making. Doc is active in helping lead the Agile
community, most recently as the Stage Producer of the New
To Agile Stage of the Agile2009 conference held in Chicago
last August.

Doc's experience includes a software technology
career spanning three decades.
He has worked on
all types of
hardware
and operating systems, multiple languages and environments.

NOTE: Doc is facilitating the
Open Space!! He intends to participate during the entire day.

Amr Elssamadisy,
a partner at Gemba Systems is a software development practitioner
who helps
his clients build better software that is more
valuable to their organizations. Amr and
his colleagues at Gemba Systems help both small and large
development teams learn new technologies, adopt and adapt appropriate
Agile development practices, and focus their efforts
to maximize the value they bring to their organizations. Amr's
technical background and experience in C/C++, Java/J2EE, and
.NET, allows him to appreciate the problems of and support development
teams 'in the trenches'.

At the same time, he realizes
that most problems - even in software - are "people
problems", and therefore are not solved by tools and technology. Therefore,
Amr and his colleagues at Gemba Systems are focused on helping their clients build better software within their
organizations by focusing on issues such as personal agility, team-building,
communication, feedback, and all of the other soft skills
that distinguish excellent teams. Amr is also the author of Agile
Patterns: A Roadmap to Organizational Success, Patterns of Agile Practice Adoption:
The
Technical Cluster, lead editor for the AgileQ at InfoQ and
a frequent presenter at software development conferences.

MICHAEL de la MAZA is an
is Agile
coach and trainer whose clients include Intuit, EMC, and Verizon
Wireless.
According to Dan Mezick (and many others) , Michael is a true
innovator in the world of Agile training and is a leader in the
development
and
leveraged use of Agile learning games.

Michael is the Agile Practice
Lead
at Knowledge
United, and developed the nineteen course KnowAgile curriculum
which is taught throughout the country. Prior to becoming
an agile coach, Michael was VP of Corporate Strategy at Softricity,
co-founded Answerfriend (now Inquira),
and was a member of the technical staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
He holds a PhD in Computer Science from MIT. Get more detail
on Michael here.

Dan Mezick is an organizatonal
change advisor, Agile coach, and the leader and
organizer of Agile Boston.

Dan is an Agile expert and trusted adviser
to executives, directors and managers seeking genuine Agile expertise
on Lean, Scrum, and Kanban. He is an invited
speaker to Agile2007, Agile2008, Agile2009 and Scrum Gathering
2010 (Orlando)

At Agile2009 he
organized the [Manifesting
Agility] stage, where group-level Psychology and Cognition
were granted formal, authorized space at the Agile conference
for the very first time. Dan's articles
on agile topics appear in Agile Journal and the Scrum Alliance
web site. His session 'Team Intimacy and the Hyper-Productive
State' was selected for presentation at the 2010 Scrum Gathering
in Orlando.

Dan provides Agile coaching in Boston, Hartford
and NYC. Dan's Agile coaching clients include The Hartford insurance
company, Travelers
Insurance,
the Red
Cross,
Dun and Bradstreet, and
several mid-market enterprises located throughout MA, CT and
RI.

Christel Reeve is an experienced
software test manager, and sometimes hands-on tester. She is
passionate about creating effective software test teams that
are responsive to business needs, and increasing the value of
testing. Chris has worked for companies both large and small
in such areas as data storage, fault tolerant software, public
safety software and networking software.

Chris started her career as an industrial
engineer, improving both in-house and suppliers' processes. She
leverages that background to find easier ways to work and reduce
cycle time throughout software development. Her interest in lightweight
methods and "just enough" process led her to study
and practice agile methods.

Chris holds a BS in Industrial Engineering
from WPI, and an MBA with a concentration on Operations Management
from Babson College, in addition to many continuing education
courses. She is a Certified Scrum Master.

NOTE: Chris plans to bring
all of her experience with her and attend the Open Space in the
afternoon.

PAUL CULLING

Paul Culling is a prominent
member of the woldwide agile/Scrum community. Based in Vancouver,
British Columbia, Paul is currently on the board of the Agile
Alliance and has been on the board of his local user group, Agile
Vancouver, for the past four years. Paul is a trained innovation
games facilitator and is experienced with open space facilitation.
Paul has worked extensively with Agile community groups at local,
regional and international levels and is the founder and editor
of the Agile Chronicles newsletter for VersionOne. Paul is a
technology marketing professional with 17 years experience in
the development and marketing of both packaged and service based
offerings. As part of his role as Director of Marketing at VersionOne,
Paul also has been working as part of a team using the scrum
framework outside of a development environment. Working from
Vancouver, BC with the majority of the team in Atlanta, Georgia,
Paul also has first-hand experience with distributed Agile practices.

NOTE: Paul's company VersionOne
is a strong supporter of Agile Boston and this event. Paul plans
to participate in the Open Space. Having Paul in the room substantially
increases the magnitude and quality of our event.

KATHY HARMAN

Kathy Harman is a partner
at Real Results, the
Leadership and Team Coaching company based in
Richmond, Virginia. She is a coach, a Scrum
Master and Leadership Coach with over 30 years
in IT as a developer, systems analyst, and project manager. She
specializes in helping teams become self-managed and high-performing,
developing team-level awareness of team dynamics, handling conflicts,
and creating a single Team Entity. She is currently working as an
Agile Coach on several non-technical projects, and is pleased at
the success of using the Scrum framework to deliver non-technical
business value
early and often.

Kathy plans to participate in the Open Space
event.

DAMON POOLE

Damon Poole is Founder and
CTO of AccuRev, a leading provider of Agile Development tools.
Damon is a methodology
and process improvement expert specializing in helping companies
discover and implement their ideal process. His twenty years
of experience spans the gamut from small collocated teams all
the way up to 10,000-person shops doing global development. Damon
is President of the Agile Bazaar in
Boston and is a Certified Scrum Master. He writes frequently
on the topic of Agile development, is the author of the web book "Do
It Yourself Agile," and a pioneer in the area of Multistage
Continuous Integration. Damon has spoken at SD Best Practices,
Software Test & Performance, Q-Con, Deep Lean, Agile 2008
and 2009, and Agile Development Practices and has also consulted
with numerous companies including Ford, Intercall, ITA Software,
Orbitz, Texas Instruments, and Verizon Wireless. He earned his
BS in Computer Science at the University of Vermont in 1987.
His "Do It Yourself Agile" blog is at http://damonpoole.blogspot.com .

Damon plans to participate in the Open Space
event.

JOHANNA ROTHMAN

Johanna Rothman of Rothman
Consulting Group works with companies to
improve how they manage their product development--to maximize
management and technical staff productivity
and to improve product quality. Johanna is a prolific author
on project management topics. Johanna is a leader in the Agile
community. She is most recently the Chair of the Agile2009 conference
(http://www.agile2009.com/).
In her role as Chair of Agile2009, she is responsible for collaboratively
leading a mostly-volunteer workforce, consisting of hundreds
of people, to produce what is arguably the most important Agile
conference in the world. Agile2009 drew 1350 attendees in 2009.

Ben Carey is an Agile Coach with Rally Software
in Raleigh, North Carolina. His experience includes over 10 years
in the software development industry. Ben has participated on
Agile teams as an Architect, Team Lead, Developer, Tester, Analyst,
Designer, and ScrumMaster. Ben has worked as an Agile Coach within
a variety of industry verticals and with Agile programs spanning
multiple teams, time zones, and continents. His passions include
enabling the fast and effective delivery of software, helping
teams reach high-performance, and helping find the essence of
great software.

Ben plans to participate in the Open Space
event.

MIKE DWYER

Mike Dwyer is a Principal Agile Coach at BigVisible Solutions.
He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and his practice focuses on
transforming an organization’s product lifecycle into
hyper-productive Agile teams.

Mike is successful implementing Agile teams beyond development
including support, help desks, product visioning, maintenance,
operations, architecture, and infrastructure. He has experience
delivering Agile in the healthcare, financial services, manufacturing,
public sector,
and professional
services industries. Mike is a well known and respected contributor
within the Scrum, Agile, and Lean software community
where he is invited
to speak, give workshops in Agile and Testing as well as contribute
to the testing community’s transition to Agile workframes.
Prior to BigVisible, Mike founded 3SidedCoin, an Agile innovation
company where he developed his ground breaking work bringing
Testing Agility to Operations and Support. Mike has worked
extensively in all phases of a product’s life cycle and
holds MBA from Boston
College.

Ken's organization Scrum.Org
creates authoritative assessments, guidance, training and certifications
in Scrum. In this session, Ken describes how assessments and
continued, advanced training, and higher professional standards
are THE next
wave in mastery of the Scrum framework. Ken describes a new and
higher
level of professional training, assessment and certification
standards that are taking Scrum professionalism to the next
level.

COME TO KEN's KEYNOTE TO LEARN:

* How courses in Scrum development using Java
and .NET technologies are the next wave in Scrum professional
training

* How Total Cost of Ownership and ROI can--
and must-- justify your Scrum adoption

* How to use Scrum.Org assessments to determine
where and what you need to focus on to become a true Scrum professional

Have you ever seen a successful pilot
of agile techniques followed by miserable failure in wider
adoption or
scaling? The current focus for scaling Agile seems to be on practices,
process, and tools. I assert that the success of any Agile adoption
effort depends first on the individuals, their interpersonal
and self-leadership skills, and the organization’s support
of these skills.

Over the years I’ve come
to believe that the number one reason for the success of any
agile adoption effort are the individuals, their skills and their
personalities. All other aspects of agile adoptions – that
is the teams and their “gelling”, and the software
development practices themselves are functions of individuals
and their interactions. This does not mean they are not important – they
are – but they are not primary. I’ll go further by
saying that agile methods were so successful in the early days
because they self-selected individuals with the proper skill
set and pushed them to grow these skills.

This session is a mix of a survey and a
tutorial. I plan to present a few models quickly and use them
to pose questions
and setup simple exercises.

WHAT YOU LEARN IN THIS SESSION:

* Understand and explain the essential
connection between ownership behavior and agility. Recognize
why and how people avoid ownership, and why and how
people take it.

* Learn the fundamental relationship between
a team and their assigned task. Discover why your group will
not function
as a team if their task is too small.
Learn how scaling and distribution can either help or hurt this issue.

* Distinguish between responsibility and accountability,
and understand the
role of each in high performance product development teams.

* Recognize the essential role of peer accountability
in a high performance software development team, what prevents
peer accountability, and what
you can do about it.

* Discover specific skills you can acquire individually which can
transform your team or organization.

Adopting agile and Scrum means dealing
with and adjusting existing cultural context. This context includes
how the organization documents work, how the organization deals
with
human emotions, and how the organization selects and sustains
leaders.

Scrum is about new ways of working that are
empirical, emergent and adaptive. Support for a switch to this
style of working requires attention to artifacts, ceremonies,
emotions and leadership. Attend this session and learn about
how to address
the often messy internals of transitioning to agile and Scrum.

Like all the training sessions I do, this
one has a participatory exercise or two which helps punctuate
the main ideas of this
session. Arrive ready to participate in a group setting.

ATTEND THIS SESSION TO LEARN ABOUT:

Scrum Under the Microscope: An examination
of the artifacts, meetings, and experience of a company that is transitioning to Scrum

Emotional State During Scrum Transitions:
A discussion of the often intense emotions (the
fear, dread, and distrust, followed by the and wonder, joy, and
satisfaction)
that people feel while transitioning to Scrum.

Psychopaths in Power: An exploration
of why we SAY we
prefer collabortive behavior but, collectively, we actually
place people who exhibit command-and-control
behavior in power.

NOTE: Michael intends to
participate in the Open Space in the afternoon

9:00PM
Event Opening: DAN MEZICK on CANONICAL SCRUM

Scrum in its canonical
form
is strongly
sustained by Ken Schwaber and
Jeff Sutherland, the originators of Scrum.

I have been using
the term 'canonical Scrum' for several years and I believe
it is time to formalize what
'canonical Scrum' actually is. In this session I do exactly
that.

As it turns out, no one actually implements
canonical Scrum. This is because canonical Scrum in practice
is NEVER instanced,
but rather, inherited as a base upon you build your custom
and unique Scrum implementation-- WITHIN YOUR UNIQUE CONTEXT.

Attend this kickoff, 1/2 hour pre-keynote
and learn:

* There is no standard Scrum implementation,
and what this means about the Scrum described in the Scrum Guide
from Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland.

* How Canonical Scrum in the Scrum Guide is
essential to effective Scrum practice

* How the Canonical Scrum in the Scrum Guide
definition is sustained by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber

The AGILE BOSTON OPEN SPACE event
promises to be a very significant event for the Boston agile
community. We have invited thought leaders from the Lean community, the
Group Relations community and other communities of practice that
are Agile-related and strong in the Boston area.

If you have
never experienced an Open Space event, you are in for a treat.

If you know the Open Space format, you know
how much FUN these events are !!